What is the EEP?

There are always many discussion threads on
erlang-questions
and other places about enhancements, changes and extensions to the
Erlang runtime system and the language.

To document the various proposals and the decisions taken we
use the Erlang Enhancement Process inspired by the
Python Enhancement Process.

Because Erlang is a programming language with a few million lines
of running business critical code in the world, the development
process must impose some rigidity and provide resistance
against accepting premature changes.
Users have Erlang code, linked in drivers written in C,
and applications that embed Erlang, so it is important
that the inconvenience of upgrading to new versions of Erlang is minimized.
Language changes might also make the language more difficult for
new users to learn.

To ensure that changes are carefully considered,
significant changes must be described in an
EEP, short for Erlang Extension Proposal.
Each EEP should explain, among other things, why the change is needed,
document how it should work, and give an overview how it should be implemented.
The EEP author should listen to the community's feeback and edit
the EEP as necessary.

Before submitting an EEP; read
EEP 1 -
EEP Purpose and Guidelines
that thoroughly explains the purpose of EEPs, their life cycle,
and prescribed format. The EEP editor will reject EEPs that do not
follow the guidelines. Also check the list of existing
EEPs before reinventing something.

EEP Editorial

There is a mailing list for EEPs: eeps (at) erlang (dot) org,
see Mailing Lists.
Anyone interested can subscribe to the list.
The EEP editor(s) are subscribed to the list,
as well as the EEP repository owner.
New EEPs should be sent here, as well as EEP updates.
Note that as with all
erlang.org mailing lists
only subscribers are allowed to post to the list.

Erlang Extension Proposal repository

The EEP source texts are in a Github GIT version control
repository.
Anyone with a Github account can fork the repository, add
or change any EEP, inform the
eeps
mailing list about the new version, and the origin
repository owner will (if approving) pull the commit.